I was on it for a few years. Started with snorting. Wound up injecting regularly, eventually. Kind of.

I preferred other intoxicants. Alcohol, specifically. Doing it drunk, of course is even harder I imagine. I don't even want to think about that.

I'm terrified of needles. The first time I tried injecting, I fucked it up. Once the needle was stuck in, I passed out, threw up, fell out of my chair and wasted $40 out of $80. Probably in that order. It was just like my first tattoo actually, come to think of it, except the tattoo was $60 and I didn't wake up with a painful lump on my arm from a sub-cutaneous disaster or dried vomit and heroin all over my pants.

I never tried shooting it myself again. I just closed my eyes and paid someone else do it via parting with some of my supply or providing the needles, since I wasn't afraid of ordering bulk B&D's online.

Sober from it since mid-2015.

this is probably an edge case but I do when i visit family and friends. these trips are short and infrequent enough that a laptop would be an unnecessary expense and i'm not driving through mountainous areas with my tower. none of them use linux. most have aged windows or mac machines. they don't care if i run a live system or puppy linux from a USB drive. i add a handful of appimages i'll use at night or if there's free time. I'm sure there are better ways but it works for me.

To add more possibilities/perspectives to the above:

The security question I've seen most in my life has probably been "What is your mothers maiden name?" which becomes fairly easy to guess with family history.

Ancestry information can reveal who is inbred.

It also can reveal politicians commiting nepotism.

Geographic location can show if someone lives in a redlined neighborhood or the part of town with all the mansions.

Simply the fact that an account exists on 23andme's website, implies someone took the test, which indicates they (or someone they know) has disposable income. Enough to pay for such a test (initially I believe it was $400 but I could be wrong) and that also implies they have some form of internet access and that they probably own a smartphone/computer/laptop/some kind of technology they can use to access their account. Thus they could be targeted simply for having potential income/assets above that of poverty level.

If actual DNA data was comprimised, which I doubt happened but suppose it did, an advanced enough attacker could use that to plant evidence at a crime scene. Who would believe a whistleblower after their DNA was found on a rape victim? Who would vote for a politician whose DNA was found on a murder weapon used to kill dozens of missing persons? They can scream "fake news!" all they want to, once that seed of doubt has been planted, once enough people are made to believe someone is guilty of some atrocity, it is hard to shake that belief. The DNA evidence is there. It was tested by scientists.

I could come up with more far fetched scenarios too. I made a list of them once because a family member purchased one of the 23andme tests for me to take. They did not understand why I refused to take the test. The reason was because a decade and a half prior, I was charged with a crime. The crime doesn't exist anymore where I live (illegal botany) but at the time it could have been a felony. I did not want to have a felony. Felons had their DNA added to a federal database to assist investigators in finding repeat offenders. I fought hard to ensure I was not convicted with a felony and succeeded by pleading to lesser charges.

The idea of having my DNA on file with a government agency like the FBI, CIA or NSA terrifies me. A malicious agent could do a lot of damage with it. They could invent threats with it to ensure I comply with their demands. The amount of possible damage they could inflict grows every day with new technology. DNA, gait and facial recognition, geofence data and an AI trained to make deepfakes, in the hands of a shadowy alphabet agency with little oversight, that's fairly unstoppable by a single person. Imagine if anyone could get their hands on that. A disgruntled coworker. An obsessive ex. A hormonal teen child having a temper tantrum.

I know this is long and extreme in parts. I hope this helps people understand that DNA data is powerful and could be abused in unimaginable ways.

Crime means breaking the law, correct?

No location is named, so I will assume this refers the laws of physics and reality.

I would:

• expand time so that it lasts a near infinite duration, contained entirely within this day of no crime
• transmute a bunch of the rocks in my apartment into gold
• alter my DNA to include working wings like a bat, a prehensile tail like a monkey, gills like a salamander, enviromental adaptability like a chameleon that's selective so I can hide these enhancements from others
• one more enhancement related to a very specific part of the anatomy of a horse or blue whale, or whatever it is people want these days
• remove all genetic defects of my body, like susceptability to cancer and addictions, grant it full immunity to diseases, put it into a perfect equilibrium with near instantaneous regeneration and longevity and thus allowing my life to last as long as I desire
• create a star from nothing and collapse it in a way that stores all of its energy into a pocket sized battery with perfect functionality and adaptability that is nearly indestructable
• hold hands with two chicks at the same time

It's fun to dream of the impossible.

Hi. You've gotten a lot of comments already. I hope this one is not lost in the pile.

When I was 39 I had all my remaining teeth extracted in one go. There were somewhere between 12 and 18, since many were remnants and not whole teeth.

Due to the fact that previously in my life I had addictions of many kinds, mostly alcohol and meth related, I was not prescribed opiates. When the procedure was done, I was awake and given only a local anesthetic.

After they were removed, I was given Amoxicillin (antibiotic) and Prednisone (steriod). They recommended I take Ibuprofen and to avoid acetaminophen (same as paracetamol i think). The latter due to many over the counter versions of it have caffiene. That brings me to my first advice.

Avoid caffeine at all costs. It will increase your pain, make you edgier and you may grind your gums in your sleep. Check your paracetamol packaging, make sure it does not have caffeine. You might want to avoid it regardless because it can irritate your stomach lining and you'll be swallowing a lot of blood which increases your chance of vomiting.

If you vomit, you will almost certainly get dry socket.

You do not want dry socket.

Ice cream is painful. Anything too cold or too hot is painful. Soup should be room temperature.

Bouillon cubes aren't bad, if you can get liquid soup stock or broth, it works better.

Do not eat breads for at least a week or two. It sticks to you clots. That can easily lead to dry socket.

You do not want dry socket.

Same thing with (american) bananas. They might seem perfect but they can cause dry socket potentially from their stickiness.

I have had dry socket. Once from smoking cigarettes. Once from being clumsy with a spoon. It was the worst pain of my life until I had to pass a few kidney stones.

Avoid foods that require cooking. You don't want to cook.

One a day shakes should be your new best friend. Meal replacement shakes. Here in the states they come in chocolate and vanilla and don't taste terrible. Brands include Ensure, Boost, Slimfast and a ton of others. They are packed with protein. They often have vitamins in them too. You can just pour the shake right into the back of your gullet. Bypass your gums and tongue entirely.

Another medication to consider is sleeping pills. I'm spelling them wrong but see if you can get Amitryptaline or Tramadol. Sleep as much as you can while your body heals.

Water, water, water.

Drink at least 2 liters a day. Never drink more than 1 liter in an 8 hour period because water poisoning is very uncomfortable. If your pee is clear, you don't need to drink water for awhile. The better hydrated you are, the faster you will heal. Drink a lot of water after drinking one of those meal replacement shakes if you can find them. Your body will absorb the water better. Same applies to the soup stock.

On that note, shower. If it is too painful, take a bath. Again, this helps you stay hydrated, plus is will improve your mood possibly, which in itself can ease the pain.

Move. Walk around the block if you can. You want to get your heart rate up and keep it up for about 15 minutes, twice a day. Again, this helps your body heal faster. Walking is great unless you are a daily runner, in which case run. Walking is enough for most people.

A perfect routine would be:

1. Wake up. Drink some water.
2. Drink a protein shake and some water. Take your medications with them.
3. Walk around the block. Or if unsafe or to pained, walk in place. Get that heart rate up.
4. Shower or bath.
5. Go back to sleep.
6. Repeat 3-4x per day, depending on how much you can sleep. It gets harder to sleep the more your do it. The exercise helps a lot.

I am not a dentist or medical professional.

I am not a professional of any kind.

This advice is all from personal experience.

Here's some useless personal information that can be skipped:

December of 2021 when my teeth were all removed. Since then I have gotten dentures. They didn't fit and hurt to wear and needed adjustments, but the dentist that made them quit the business a week after I got them. Other dentists would not take my insurance or work on them for liability purposes. Sucks being in america. I opted to get implants instead. I'm supposed to have a full set of teeth in about a month, at age 42, for the first time in my entire adult life.

Good luck. May dry socket never happen to you.

Edit after reading a few of the comments here.

Fuck these naysayers that think you're making this up. Even if you are, fuck 'em. Trying to shit on a person while they are already down. No benefit at all, just cynics, they're disgusting.

I'm going to add that my teeth were in terrible shape long before I had addiction problems. My dental problems were due to braces getting fucked up and mangled beyond belief by a scammy dentist/ortho.

Medicaid and Medicare can be free healthcare in the states. While I don't think OP is in the states, it is a thing that the poorest of people can receive and the care is exactly what you pay for. All the questions about speaking to a doctor or the dentist about pain management are laughable, knowing that for the poor in the states, that simply doesn't happen in many areas.

People saying OP deserved it from not brushing or questions about how one could need a full extraction at age 40 are ignorant and can't summon even the smallest bit of empathy. These types along with the naysayers can go fuck off back to reddit or 4chan or whereever they came from. They are not adding to the conversation.

If you have read all this, anyone not just OP, I hope you have a nice day.

Because I am terrible at writing, most of this was painstakingly generated using LLaMA 3.1 70B & 405B. Believe it or not, this was actually a lot of work.

The LLM ruins your presentation in my opinion. I do not mean that you disclosed the use of a LLM, I personally appreciate that honesty quite a lot. The short version is that there is too much elaboration.

That's the first thing the LLM provided for you: It elaborates too much and gives a massive wall of text. One that you spent a long time painstakingly editing. If you had started from scratch and formulated it yourself, you most likely could have come up with a far more readable essay for the average stranger on the internet (I'm assuming that was your intended audience. I'm frequently wrong about things.) Look for the redundancies. LLM's seem to love saying the same thing in different ways. Just an observation I've made which I have no backing for. Many of these points could easily be combined in my opinion.

The second thing using AI did to your detriment, is that the sections are not human-like. They are formulaic, each one having several clauses or thoughts strung together with commas. Sure, each sentence might be grammatically correct but I bet I could read this to my nephews as a way to quickly get them to fall asleep. Not only does every sentence have multiple thoughts and concepts, there are few intermediary sentences to break up the monotony.

The third and final thing I will point out is that page breaks and spacing things out are absolutely critical to keeping people engaged. Twitter became popular because of the character limit. If your point takes longer than 7 seconds for someone to read in their head, you've lost half your audience. Tell the AI to be more succint if you continue using one.

I think you might do better if you took out all of the text that isn't bolded/strong or a header. Link to the full manuscript somewhere else at the end for those who are interested. Those 2-4 words starting the numbered points are all most people will need. If they do need further clarification or specifics, visit that's when they can visit a link at the end.

Just my two cents.

All billionaires in electric chairs.

The 2019 Memorial Day tornado outbreak. Less than a week away from the 5 year anniversary of it.

My apartment is located roughly 500 feet (152 meters) from the end point of an EF4 tornado that hit and about 1500 feet (~450 meters) of the start point of an EF3 tornado that hit. One ended and the other began within minutes of each other.

I recall I looked out of my front door and could only see the sideways winds. I had just woken up after sleeping all day because I was tired, having stayed up late the night before, burying my cat which had eaten mouse poison, which I was unaware of the symptoms for until it was too late. I had to bury my cat a second time then next day and broke my hand in frustration while doing it.

My power was out for 10 days and I had no water for 6 days. I didn't own a car and public transportation had halted in my area from trees blocking the roads. I walked 4.5 miles to a nearby Urgent Care for my hand but they had closed due to damage. From there I walked 9 miles to the nearest hospital. They had too many people. I gave up waiting to be seen after 8 hours and went home, then wrapped my hand with bandages myself, around an old brace I had from a previous unrelated broken wrist.

When my power came back, I learned that a power surge had fried the power supply of my computer. I eventually managed to check my email at the community college, which is when I learned my health insurance coverage through Medicaid had ended, thanks to an order from the president at the time.

My absentee landlord never checked on the building. Less than a month later, the in-wall A/C unit fell out of the wall, leaving a hole large enough for me, a 6'3" 250 lb man, to easily crawl through. It was there for 6 months before it was repaired by the landlords maintenance person, who bought a cheap window unit A/C and stuck it in the hole then filled in around it with expanding foam.

The hole was 'fixed' around the same time I was able to buy a replacement power supply for my computer. My data storage drive had also stopped working and I learned an important lesson regarding backups. That was right around Christmas time.

Unrelated to the tornados, that's about when I started passing kidney stones. I tried to go to the hospital for them but without insurance, they turned me away. It wasn't considered an emergency. I missed several days of work while I passed them at home. Work said because of the amount of time I missed, I needed a doctors note to return to work. Work would schedule me 6 hour shifts, 6 days a week, which comes to 36 hours. Employees needed 40 hours a week to be considered full time and to qualify for the company insurance. Without insurance, I couldn't find a doctor who would see me. I was terminated and the reason they listed was that I abandoned my job.

My official last day with the company was 31 December 2019. I was ready to start a new year. 2019 had not been kind to me. I remember thinking to myself on New Years Day "At least 2020 can't possibly be worse, right?"

now is my chance to brag that I've been running HML on a eee pc netbook that's mounted on a wall in my bathroom, for about 4 years now, as a music player and in case of emergency internet searches when showering and it does its job wonderfully.

I see this post is old enough that my comment is less likely to be seen but i feel this is a somewhat relevant anecdote regarding the sale of automotive data.

last april i bought a used car. i had not owned or driven a vehicle in well over a decade. i had never operated a vehicle with a computer, not like the kind this car had at least with its 'infotainment' console and numerous digital featrures. one such 'feature' was the navigation system. a map on the little tv in the console would show me directions after i entered an address into it. how useful!

i was taking a trip to visit my grandparents not long after buying the car and to test out the navigation system, i entered their address into it. it failed to give me correct directions however, since the nav system was ran off an SD card inserted into a port inside the storage space between the driver and passenger seats. the car was made in 2013 and the sole previous owner had never used the nav system. the SD card was in its original packaging, unopened and in the glove box.

i ended up visiting the grandparents by finding their home by memory, the way i normally navigate, and went on with my life. after that weekend, i learned the car had a recall. i could take it to a authorized dealership and have the faulty system replaced at no cost to me. so i did just that. the recalled part was supposedly fixed and all seemed well.

a week or two passes and i get a call from my grandfather. he recieved mail addressed to me, asking if i wanted to sell my vehicle. my name, his address. i have never searched for his address on the internet, i know it by memory. the only place i have ever entered the location was in that car navigation system. i have never even spoken the address out loud nor heard it spoken in several decades, so those who believe phone are always recording with their microphones.

i believe the only way that mail could have been sent in my name to their address, was through the navigation system data being downloaded from the car and sold to third parties. my grandparents have recieved several pieces of mail addressed to me since then. always, it is referencing my vehicle, with the correct make, model and year showing.

i will never trust ford or purchase their products ever again. i should have known better than to have purchased this car, but it was a very good price with only one previous owner and a great carfax report.

I simply use my credit card number for my password on every site. it makes it so much easier to remember both. back in the day i would use my social security number. thanks to that simple trick, i never get robocalls or spam and i've been removed from most mailing lists because no one will ever issue credit or do business of any kind with me. a hacker stole my identity once and my credit score quadrupled. he even gave my identity back a week later!

Not sure when this became a thing, but it feels relevant and might be useful to someone someday.

a formerly homeless friend once showed me that taking a brick and grinding it on top of the can, will open it without a knife. the 'ridge' of the can, the metal circle that runs along the diameter at either the top or bottom, is a metal 'lid' that's folded or pinched shut onto the other piece of metal, the 'cup'. (single quotes around terms i picked and might not be official jargon)

in just a few minutes, the brick ground the metal off the ridge, seperating the lid from the cup, which easily popped out. technically you don't really need any tool, just some relatively flat concrete or a rough flat rock. or even low grit sandpaper.

i don't recommend tossing out the can opener though, there is a chance of metal shavings falling in if you aren't careful. still might be useful in an emergency.